Sometimes it's amazing the way
people
can ignore the
obvious.From the time I was 14 until I
turned 18, it never occurred to me I was a boy-lover.Four whole years!When
I
think back on it, I see so many things that escaped my attention.

I was fourteen when I entered
grade
ten -- tall, eccentric,
and very religious.I was preoccupied
by deep thoughts about the nature of reality and knowledge, thoughts
that
annoyed me because I didn't like having questions to which I couldn't
give
adequate answers.As a result, I
embraced a sort of omniscient fundamentalism.

All this thinking was not
without
practical purpose.For instance, it drew
my attention away from
one thing: my growing interest in the grade- nine boys.First there was Dennis.He
was short, blond, and very cute.It was
months before I even had the nerve to
speak to him and, of course, that is all I did.The
story was similar with all the others.I
just wanted to be around them.All this
time I was keenly aware that they
were sexual beings, but it never dawned on me that I was sexually
interested in
them.

But interested I was!In the year and a half that followed, I had
many
crushes on boys, many
of them blond.There was, for me, a
mystique that surrounded beautiful boys who were experiencing the best
that
puberty had to offer them.Mind you,
all this time, it rarely hit me that my interest was homosexual in
nature. The only time that thought crossed
my mind
was when I was following a boy at school once, staring at his tight
jeans.My favorite books, television shows
and
movies were the ones featuring beautiful boys.I
recall discovering Silver Spoons in 1985 and being
delighted.

Finally it happened.My fleshly nature got the best of me and I
began to
masturbate.(Oh horror!) I considered this
on par with
adultery, an attitude which had kept me from indulging.The summer I turned 16 I compensated, doing
three or four times a day what I had not done at all previously.Then I began to fantasize and it didn't take
me long to realize that I wasn't straight.At
the time I assumed I was bisexual.After
all, the fantasies I had when I was thirteen
were all of
women.And the fantasies I had when I
was 16 included women.But largely, the
women in the latter fantasies were having sex with the boys I was
primarily
fantasizing about.The girls weren't
essential in the plot.

The grade nines at my school,
when I
was in grade twelve,
were the best!So many cute little
blonds.And yet I rarely spoke to any
of them.After all, what would they
make of a tall, eccentric sixteen-year-old ambling over to their table
at lunch and making small-talk?In
retrospect, I
wish I had. I wish I had learned art or
sketching so that I could go up to one of them and say, "I'm looking
for a
model for this art assignment...."

But such an event never
transpired.I figured that I would
eventually have a
girlfriend, get married, normalize, whatever.After
all, I didn't find women unattractive.I
supposed that the interest in males would
work itself out.Could I identify myself
as gay?After all, I wasn't interested in
adult
men.I was certainly aware of my
inclinations, but, to me "being gay" meant actively living an immoral
lifestyle.That was out of the
question.

It may have been out of the
question,
but I didn't stop
fantasizing about boys.It didn't keep
me from browsing the sex section of the library either.Upon entering the university, I found the
latter pastime quite refreshing.Since
I rarely ventured off campus, I didn't see many beautiful boys,
therefore,
books on adolescent sexuality provided some degree of solace.I discovered Kinsey.Whoever
thought one could get turned on by
reading a book of statistics?I often
searched for material on adolescent homosexuality and found very few
books on
homosexuality that discussed this subject.Even
at this time, I wasn't totally aware that I
wanted sex with a
boy.The majority of my fantasies were
of boys having sex with girls or other boys.I
never entered the picture.Perhaps this
eased my conscience in some way.

I eventually made some steps
toward
coming to terms with my
tastes.I had often suspected that I
was mostly homosexual.So I went to a
meeting of our university's gay/lesbian association.To put it plainly, I simply didn't identify with the
people
there.The next step was admitting to
myself that just maybe, an alternate lifestyle was not necessarily evil.I had met an openly gay student in my
department and he seemed like a person who wasn't warped or evil.My next step was to be honest with myself
about my specific tastes and tell someone.I
had already told some friends that I thought I had
homosexual
tendencies, but it wasn't until February, 1988, that I told a friend
that young
teens turned me on.I didn't say it in
a positive way.On the contrary, I
thought of it as a "problem.”My
friend, however, was quite accepting, as he had interests in young teen
girls.

The real turning point came
when I was
stumbling through the
sex section of my hometown college library.One
book caught my attention.It
was titled Sexual Experiences Between Men and Boys by Parker Rossman.I expected it would be about devious, evil
men who seduce children.But instead of
presenting the stereotyped child-molester, Rossman discussed pederasty
in a
positive light.It never occurred to me
that many boys look for experiences with men.I
never imagined that there were societies in which
boy-love was thought
of favorably.Moreover, I never thought
that there were thousands of people much like me: people with similar
desires
who are not criminals or kidnappers.In
the matter of an hour, I had discovered that I was not alone -- perhaps
not even
as abnormal as I had supposed.

So, why did I take four years
to come
to this point?Obviously, because there is
little sympathy
for a sexuality which deviates so far from the majority.Our society doesn't encourage openness and
honesty about such feelings.On the
contrary, it makes pederasts feel like innately criminal perverts, and
instills
a fear that prevents us from talking to boys and expressing our inner
feelings.When will society be open
enough to admit boy-love exists and discuss it in a sane, unprejudiced,
and
rational way?This may not necessarily
lead to a full public acceptance of boy-love.But
without open communication, nothing will ever be
accomplished.